Rantings

Everyone should have access to any music they want to hear. I'm not going to shut myself off from culture just because I make minimum wage. I have a right to explore digital media. I think everyone does. And many, many people will take advantage of that freedom to enjoy the creative output of an artist without giving anything back. That's too bad. Not everyone can afford it, and not everyone cares enough. Of course I believe that artists deserve to be compensated for the things they create. Thankfully, I do have a small amount of disposable income, and I use some of it to support artists I like by buying records and seeing their shows. I see myself as a patron of the arts. I can't possibly buy all the records I want, but I'm working on it. Knowing how to prioritize becomes a necessity then for the serious music fan. The internet is an invaluable tool. I can have any music I want, so I choose what I really think is truly excellent to spend my money on. I know I'm not like most people, but that's how I roll. The problem is that in decades past our idea of the value of music has fluctuated wildly. Today we are awash in talented music. It's a devalued resource. Kids today won't pay for music -- or will they? My peer group isn't representative of most 20-somethings, but many of my friends do see shows or buy music or merch. What's more, even though many bands don't ever make money and people seem to be more jaded about major-label success than ever before, people are still forming bands. Music isn't in trouble, it's the industry that's suffering. Even then it's the bigger, larger, slower beasts with incredible overheads that are wallowing in tar-black sales figures. Smaller, more flexible labels who operate with skinnier budgets are devising innovative ways to succeed in the marketplace. Isn't that what capitalism is all about? Until the 20th Century, people enjoyed music only one way -- live. But just about anyone could practice enough to be semi-proficient, and even if they couldn't, people would still get together and make music with each other for the sheer enjoyment of it. The recording process changed our relationship with music. When we learned how to record and play back music, we made it possible for the moment of spontaneous performance to be immortalized. This in turn caused the creation of an industry which could finance the recording process and pay for the increasingly sophisticated equipment that followed. In doing so, they also worked with the mass media, particularly radio, to create a bottleneck; for the most part, only music that they released reached the ears of the public. The gatekeepers of the media then decided who got played to the general public. Many people -- bands, managers, executives, corporate shareholders etc. -- got very wealthy this way. Music that sells is a much rarer thing than just music by itself. In doing so they also changed our perception of how musicians perform their art. It was recorded music, not live music, that fixed in the audiences' mind the idea of how music "should" sound. This allowed them to insist upon the recording process sounding just so. Modern music that doesn't have a digital sheen doesn't have a prayer of making the jump into the major media marketplace. This does not mean, however, that people have lost the ability to respond when faced with music in a live setting. The trick, as Carducci says, is getting them there in the first place. The industry has taught us to venerate the cult of the star. It was in their interests to do so, because then they could sell us the name/face/image of their latest act. That's a lot easier for them to do if they've conditioned us to believe that whatever shiny product they are foisting on us couldn't possibly be equaled by any four random people in a garage somewhere. Unfortunately for them, the internet taught us that many many people could in fact equal the output of major labels. Go ahead and check youtube and see how many videos of guitarists there are doing a pretty fair version of "Eruption." Bands have also had their worldview warped by the boom years of the record industry. Traveling musicians and minstrels in years past knew how difficult it was to ply their trade, but they did it anyways, even if allowing that they were not likely to ever achieve wealth (fame was another story). The ideal that some people still aspire to now is unrealistic. Bands, many very good ones, still believe in the fantasy of the Led Zeppelin-Rolling Stones jetliners-supermodels-trashing hotels-mountains of cocaine rock n' roll fantasy. Real bands today can spend 20 years working their asses off to make a living, and still never passing through that glass ceiling defined by exposure in the mass media. The few that do break through without the media's help are labelled "cult acts" precisely because their situation differs so starkly from the norm. Usually you have to be pretty damn good to attract a following the old fashioned way, by relentless touring. To accuse a band like Nickelback of not having -any- talent is off base. I'm not going to tell you that they make good music, just that they have a talent for scamming the music-buying public and playing BIG MUSIC's industry game. Chad shits out hits, and people eat it up, with radio happy to supply the snow shovel. Nickelback don't suck any more than any other group of artisans raised on commercial 90s "modern rock" radio that DOESN'T fill stadiums. They write generic rock songs with good hooks and a huge production budget. Stylistic consolidators, astute racketeers and hack opportunists have formed and supported bands like Nickelback in the past and it's just lazy to blame them for everything that's wrong with the industry. I'm sure Nickelback put on a suitably professional arena-rock show with explosions and lasers and play all their hits exactly the way they sound on the radio. In other words, "Don't hate the playa, hate the game!"